In fact, there was very little at all around it. Barely any documentation, nearly no SAP notes and only a few people that had a clue what this new thing did and how it did it.

Finding the right information, people who knew something and correct answers actually was hard.

I had some experience with SDN and sites like AskTom.com, so I knew that answering questions, explaining concepts and discussing specific questions can go a long way when it comes to “enablement” and knowledge sharing.

So, with the hope to spark active community participation I volunteered to do just that in 2011.

Fast forward five years on, there are now around 50 blog posts on SAP HANA, several topic leader batches, other communities (SAP internal JAM, stackoverflow) and a SAP Press book ‘under my belt’. I managed to talk a couple of SAP colleagues into spending their time here and provided answers as well as opinions to thousands of discussion threads. And let’s not forget the countless emails I wrote to colleagues, partners and people I don’t even know who asked me questions about HANA – only to be redirected to this very forum 🙂 .

And the community is thriving! There’s a good set of regulars (both SAP employees and externals) who share their expertise on a daily basis – just look at the current 12-month leadership board. Every week several blog posts and documents are created and shared.

In the wake of the upcoming conversion to 1DX the technical platform for this community will change and that is something that others will do better than I would. I assume that the SAP HANA product management and development teams might continue to provide more and more official material into via this channel. Also, there’s tons of high quality user generated that will be converted and available in the new forums.

All in all really nice times for anyone starting off with SAP HANA nowadays.